We are currently using trialing backup exec 2012 and it's been somewhat of a headache. I would like to know what other people suggest that is a good price. We are a non-profit so the price of backup exec 2012 is great from Tech Soup, but I would like to get away from it.

I don't know what about Backup Exec you'd like to see in another product, but if you want a product that backs up either VMware or Hyper-V infrastructures, take a look at Veeam. Very reasonably priced if you're just looking for the standard edition, which provides most of the features you really need.

EDIT: Don't know how I missed that thread but I got fed up with BE2010 and went to appassure. I went from 6-hour hold times for support with Symantec, to the screenshot below in my Spiceworks timeline on my dashboard:

Don't give up on us yet Lance. I am a Packer shareholder and always fly Allegiant into the Appleton airport for games. What kind of headaches are you getting from BE 2012? Do you have the service packs installed on your eval? If you would like to DM me I will send you my direct contact information to address any questions or issues you might have.

I would take a look at Unitrends, but it depends on what resources you have available. Their hardware appliances can have a high $ value, though it is worth it for what they offer. You may be better off waiting until 6-29 and seeing how the numbers work out for their Unitrends Enterprise Backup. Depending on your resources you may even be able to make the free version work for you.

We need to be where our partners and users are. Big companies can get caught up in their ivory towers and think they have all the answers while the people outside are shouting the real answers to them. If we don't listen, obsolescence is sure to follow.

Other than being a non-profit, what other requirements do you have? What kind of environment do you have? Do you need to archive? The answers to these questions can help the community understand your needs better, so that we can make better suggestions for your needs.

Rob hit the nail right on the head in his post above about Unitrends. We are currently offering up to 40% off to any existing Backup Exec customer who makes the switch to Unitrends. Please let me know if you would like more details, or have any questions.

I'm intrigued that you would want to spend time, money, and other resources to maintain two different backup solutions for your physical and virtual environments, when there are multiple solutions out there, Unitrends included, that can protect all of your environments from a single solution. What was the feature from Veeam that tipped the scales for you?

Katie, I'll take a punt that it's because your current appliances are not cheap as currently you're still paying by capacity.

Get some pricing out for Enterprise backup and I suspect you'll be more competitive with Veeam for a small environment.

Hit the nail right on the head!

At first blush, our prices can seem a bit high, but when you take into consideration that you are purchasing the solution outright, including both hardware and software, the costs pale in comparison to other backup products where you have to purchase the software and hardware separately.

Remember, that there are no per anything charges with Unitrends Physical Appliances - no per client, OS, application, feature etc. Reporting, deduplication, encryption, and so many other features are included at no additional cost.

The only recurring costs are for support, which includes hardware support (including replacement should there ever be a full loss) & software support, all of which is domestically based. Support also includes all software updates.

So while we might price our solution a bit differently than our competitors, it should be refreshing - there are never any surprises next week, next month, or next year when it comes to determining how much you'll have to pay for Unitrends backup.

Thanks for the input everyone it looks like I am going to go with VEEAM for our virtual servers and am going to look for something else for my physical exchange server.

Rather than running 2 solutions, take a look at appassure, does everything veam does, plus covers the physical stuff too. And in the trial's I've done, the item level restore in exchange works like a dream

Plus the pricing model for the virtual servers is very competetive - 1 licence per socket on the host and all guests are covered :)

Katie, I'll take a punt that it's because your current appliances are not cheap as currently you're still paying by capacity.

Get some pricing out for Enterprise backup and I suspect you'll be more competitive with Veeam for a small environment.

Hit the nail right on the head!

At first blush, our prices can seem a bit high, but when you take into consideration that you are purchasing the solution outright, including both hardware and software, the costs pale in comparison to other backup products where you have to purchase the software and hardware separately.

Remember, that there are no per anything charges with Unitrends Physical Appliances - no per client, OS, application, feature etc. Reporting, deduplication, encryption, and so many other features are included at no additional cost.

The only recurring costs are for support, which includes hardware support (including replacement should there ever be a full loss) & software support, all of which is domestically based. Support also includes all software updates.

So while we might price our solution a bit differently than our competitors, it should be refreshing - there are never any surprises next week, next month, or next year when it comes to determining how much you'll have to pay for Unitrends backup.

How can you make the claim there's no surprises? Unitrends's cost is based on storage capacity rather than on the number of servers. In our enviroment it's the amount of data that's increasing much faster than the number of servers. If my data exceeds the appliance capacity, I get to pay for more storage. That's no different than paying for additional server licenses.

Of course I can buy an appliance with twice the storage I need initially so it will take a while to exceed but then my upfront cost is much higher.

How can you make the claim there's no surprises? Unitrends's cost is based on storage capacity rather than on the number of servers. In our enviroment it's the amount of data that's increasing much faster than the number of servers. If my data exceeds the appliance capacity, I get to pay for more storage. That's no different than paying for additional server licenses.

Of course I can buy an appliance with twice the storage I need initially so it will take a while to exceed but then my upfront cost is much higher.

If you pay attention to what you're buying, there won't be surprises with any vendors products. With Unitrend's appliances, it's easy to figure out the cost. It's 'x' number of dollars for 'x' amount of storage, with 'x' amount a year for maintenance for 'x' years. No other fees. Run out of storage? Buy another appliance or forklift upgrade your existing appliance. ;-)

Some of the backup vendors don't make it that easy though... my local vendor literally had to get an ARCserve rep on the phone just to figure out what part numbers I needed to cover my environment! I went with StorageCraft's ShadowProtect, which required no phone calls to figure out, and was considerably less expensive than ARCserve. It was simply 'x' amount of dollars per VM, with 'x' amount of maintenance per year. They have additional functionality that I can purchase later if I want it, all clearly spelled out on their website. I bought a relatively inexpensive Netgear ReadyNAS as a backup target.

I'm backing up a Xenserver virtual environment though, so tools like Veeam weren't an option for me.

How can you make the claim there's no surprises? Unitrends's cost is based on storage capacity rather than on the number of servers. In our enviroment it's the amount of data that's increasing much faster than the number of servers. If my data exceeds the appliance capacity, I get to pay for more storage. That's no different than paying for additional server licenses.

Of course I can buy an appliance with twice the storage I need initially so it will take a while to exceed but then my upfront cost is much higher.

If you pay attention to what you're buying, there won't be surprises with any vendors products. With Unitrend's appliances, it's easy to figure out the cost. It's 'x' number of dollars for 'x' amount of storage, with 'x' amount a year for maintenance for 'x' years. No other fees. Run out of storage? Buy another appliance or forklift upgrade your existing appliance. ;-)

Some of the backup vendors don't make it that easy though... my local vendor literally had to get an ARCserve rep on the phone just to figure out what part numbers I needed to cover my environment! I went with StorageCraft's ShadowProtect, which required no phone calls to figure out, and was considerably less expensive than ARCserve. It was simply 'x' amount of dollars per VM, with 'x' amount of maintenance per year. They have additional functionality that I can purchase later if I want it, all clearly spelled out on their website. I bought a relatively inexpensive Netgear ReadyNAS as a backup target.

I'm backing up a Xenserver virtual environment though, so tools like Veeam weren't an option for me.

bwilling hit the nail on the head when describing our licensing. Our engineers are trained to take into consideration what kind of growth you have experienced historically, and what kind of growth you anticipate going forward when making appliance suggestions. Sizing out Unitrends solutions either too large or too small only leads to one thing - unhappy customers, and that is not something that we strive for.

bhartung - It sounds like a per client based approach may be a better fit for your particular set of needs, when taking into consideration your rate of growth, rather than the capacity based approach of appliances like Unitrends. The new Unitrends Enterprise Backup will be priced on a per socket basis, so if you like our features, just not our appliance based licensing, you may want to take a look at that.

The price of Veeam was right for us and I really liked how it worked in our environment, Unitrends does seems like good product. I did respond to Matt's request to give Backup Exec another chance and never heard back for him.